New Mac book air

By Callum Stoneman, 18 May, 2013

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Hello, I've just bought myself a new Mac Book air. I honestly love it compared to my old crappy windows XP computer. I have never used a Mac before and need a bit of help with some VO commands. Firstly, I've got my iTunes library saved on my old PC as I only got the mac today. My phone was sinced with iCloud so I got all my contacts, calendars notes etc, but I can't seem to get stuff like my apps and music off my PC and into iTunes on the mac. I've tryed plugging in my phone but when I try to sinc it it keeps everything I had on my phone on my phone and keeps my mac iTunes blank. How can I get my data from my PC to my mac? Another thing, how can I search the app store with VoiceOver? Can you talk me through the comands from opening the app store to finding the search box? Thanks to anyone that can help.

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By Chelsea on Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 15:03

Hi there! So glad you are enjoying your new Mac. I love my as well. For your iTunes problem, you will need to move your whole library over from your pc there are a number of apple support articles instructing you in how to do this, but it basically involves copying your entire iTunes folder from your old computer to an external drive that will hold it, and then onto your new Mac. In my case, I leave the library on the external drive because my ssd so small. I can walk you through how to get iTunes to recognise the library if you think this is a good option. For your second question, doesn't matter if you are in the Mac or Ios app stores. To find an app, simply press commend f when you are in the required program. Command f is usually a system wide find commend. Hope this helps! I never regret buying my Mac. Chelsea

Hi Chelsea thanks for the help. I'll have a look at the Apple support and move my iTunes library through an external hard drive. Could you also tell me another couple of keyboard commands? I've installed Menu tab for facebook but I don't know where it's gone. So far I can only navigate to the desktop and the doc and it's not on either of those. It's deffinetly installed, I need to know where to find it. Can you also tell me how to move apps to the desktop? And also how can you open a page from the bookmarks on Safari? Again I can navigate to them it's just when I click on them I get the name and address in an editable text field. Sorry for asking quite a lot I just have a bit of figuring out to do lol

By chris R on Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 15:03

Hi, Menu tag for Facebook is a menu-bar app, so it lives in the part of the menu-bar that Voice over calls the menu extras section. To get to this press VO-M twice until you're in the menu extras, and the app will be somewhere on the left part of this. To open it, Press VO-space on it. Also, menu tag for Facebook has its own built-in hotkey, so if you press control-F from any part of the Mac it will take you directly into the app. As regards opening Safari bookmarks, you don't press return or VO-Space on a bookmark to open it, as this simply lets you rename it, hence your confusion with the editable fields. Instead you must double-click it with the trackpad, or hold down the space-bar until it opens. This is not immediately apparent. In order to add an app to the desktop, the easiest way is to find the app you're looking for, bring up the context menu by pressing VO-Shift-M, and select make alias. After you have done this, a new file with extension .alias will have been created, and you will be in a position to rename it. Press return and copy it to the clipboard with command-C. Next move to the desktop with VO-shift-D and paste in the .alias file with command-V. An alias is the same as a shortcut in Windows. Also, in case you didn't know, to add an app to the dock, press command-shift-t when it is selected. Hope this helps, Chris :-).

Hi, It's accepted really in OS X land that the desktop be kept as clean as possible. This is because the finder redraws all of the icons for the applications whenever the desktop is accessed, slowing the system down. The desktop in OS X is really a scratchpad type place, not like in Windows where you can stash all sorts on it and be alright.

True, that too would work. Always worth remembering that there is often more than 1 way of doing something on the mac, and it is a matter of personal choice which one you choose.